Dont know if this is any help or not but when mythfilldatabase has thrown up errors for me ive checked /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log which usually tells me where the problem is, as Purps said it usually turned out to be a permissions problem, so I change permissions and it runs fine afterwards

I setup and had a play with the xbmc upnp over the weekend and it's working well, is it possible to control xbmc directly (and boxee)?

I still can't get live tv on the orbiters tho, I've been looking at mythbackend.log and there is no mention of mythtv player starting from the orbiters, but if I start mythfrontend from terminal or mythtv player from a windows machine there is. is there a way to check if it is running?

Nothing has been changed in the setup. I had the tv turned onto the NC yesterday and all was ok. I added an Asrock ion 330 as a MM, setup motion and a usb webcam from pluto-admin as of the wiki and then deleted motion and the webcam because it didnt work and im planning on getting some ip cameras.

I have a clonezilla image from when I first got the NC as a backup, should I install that to see if it fixes the problem?